The next morning, I walk out into the town. I try to remember the way everything was, but so much had changed. The small-time shops had given way to small malls. The centre of town, where there used to be a huge tree, is now a fountain, flowing with the false pretence of beauty. The travellers to the festival, mostly tourists, come for a holiday here. They don’t realize what they could have seen. The centre had had many shops for small vendors, who gave out groceries, pottery, weaves upon weaves of craftsmanship. But no more. Restaurants lined the streets while a museum and a government building stood tall. The roads were much smoother, helped by the funding put into making it hospitable for those who went through the town.
I cross to the other side of the town, trying to find the house where I grew up. An apartment complex had replaced the house, leaving only the lone tree that grew high in front of it. I go up to it and touch it, feeling the tree’s bark. It was my only companion at times when I felt the world was against me. The branches I used to climb had been cut off. The sunset, visible from the topmost branch, could no longer be with another child who dared climb the tree. I looked over at where my house used to be. I could never call it home. No matter how hard I tried. I moved on.
The end of the street, a thicket of bamboo, was visible now. I stopped in front of it, hesitating. It’s been twelve years. I hadn’t come back here for just this very reason. I stepped in. I find the worn path, somewhat grown over by weeds and grass. I follow it. The thicket was usually in shadow, most of the year. It still is. Glad that some things didn’t change. I see the glimmer of light, the sparkle I yearned for each time I went through the thicket. And the thick bamboo gave way to the banks of the Lake Tai. The grass here was solemn, built enough to keep the water from coming into the land and low enough to sit down for a picnic. I turn to look at what I came here to see. The wall of sunflowers. An almost broken-down mud wall, with a blanket of sunflowers lining the bottom edge. The wall extended, guided by the sunflowers to go along up to the banks, giving the effect like they were crawling out of the river.
It was beautiful. Especially this week, how could it not be so lush? It was a wall made long before the town built itself, made when it was just a little village, with a handful of people living in huts and cottages. The wall was the only thing the village could claim attraction to, as poverty had made most colours drab and life unpleasant. By the time I was born, the thicket had grown and the wall, hidden behind the thicket, was lost. I remember coming here just to sit with my back to the mud of the wall, cradling and patting the sunflowers going along the edge. Those afternoons after school were the most joyful memories that I had of growing up. And I wasn’t alone. I vaguely remember another person there. A girl, maybe the same age I was, had given me company on a few days. She wasn’t there every day but every now and then, there she was. We never spoke. I never knew her name. I only had my eyes for the sunflowers, and I didn’t even know her face. Walking to the wall, I realize my eyes can almost see over the top of it now. The years really did pass by!
It was almost evening now, the festival’s lights and lamps had been lit. I looked to the other side of the banks where people raised their lamps one by one, each extending its path taken, only to consume the now-night sky. The bank I was on, however, was unlit. No lamps ever shone on my side of the lake. People had forgotten. I watched as more lights came up on the shore. This time, they were from the cellphones. I chuckled. No reason for me to have a cellphone now. No one in Shanghai knew I was here. No one questioned me when I quit my job too. They knew I had hated it for years. Still, I had to leave a message behind. And I did. I briefly told in a letter placed in my house, of what I was going through. The sadness of a job. The loneliness of a break-up. The void that filled me for a long time. And the wall of the sunflowers. And how much I longed to see it again if it was the last thing I ever got to do. Leaving my door closed but unlocked, I left the city for the last time.
I sit down at the bank, my legs crossed and my arms behind me, supporting myself as I gazed upon the natural starlight, now almost hidden by the artificial ones. The flowers still grazed my hand, fluttering in the wind. Although stooped down by the fall of night, the sunflowers still had their graceful charm.
I hear someone. I look behind. A woman walked along the bank towards me. It’s her. She smiled, tears forming in her eyes. For the first time, I hear her voice. She was telling me how much she missed me and how the memories she had here were the most serene, the most beautiful. When she was done, still smiling, she took my hand in hers. I find myself cracking a smile, not voluntarily but somewhat from the heart, I think. I open my mouth to tell her how what my life had been but she stops me. She tells me she knows. How could she know, I ask. But she only points to herself and the lake and the sunflowers. She tells me she’s always been there with me. Me being with the sunflowers only helped me see her form in this world. No other mortal could ever do that. The sunflowers. She gets up slowly and with passion in her eyes, she tells me that it’s time. And she floats away, facing me, out into the lake. I smile, this time, genuine, with a longing for a life where there are fields of sunflowers surrounding the great lake, back before towns and people. In the days before humankind roamed the free fields and cut them down. When everything that shone on the ground faced the sun in his relentless voyage across the sky. I lay back against the wall, closing my eyes. Stroking my hand over the flowers a final time, to finally sleep.
